It’s Only Common Sense

Are you proud of buying the cheapest?

It has always amazed me that the same people who claim to be building the best products on the market today are also the ones who want to buy the cheapest ingredients they can.

Our customers like to tell us that they need the best price possible or else. If we do not provide them with the best price possible they will find someone who will, even if that means going offshore, to find that price that they want.

In other words, do whatever you need to do to give them the cheapest boards that money can buy or else. They want us to do whatever we have to do, cut whatever corners we can. Do anything we can do to give them the cheapest products under the sun.

I am amazed at this because sorry, it is just not common sense. When a great chef creates he wants to use the best ingredients that money can buy. If a great artist is creating great art he wants to use the best materials that money can buy, when a craftsman builds a beautiful cabinet he wants to buy the best wood that money company. All of these people want to use the very best materials or ingredients that they can.

So then how can many of our customers claim that they need the cheapest materials they can get their hands and then turn around and tell their customers that they are building the best products in the world? Sorry it does not add up, you cannot make a great product out of crummy materials, that’s all there is to it.

I know, I know, when I challenge my friends on the buying end of the business they tell me that all PCB shops are the same, the quality is exactly the same, the technology is the same. Their companies has done their homework and they know their suppliers and they know that it will all come down to price. They actually believe that they can buy the cheapest products possible and still be covered enough to put out the best products in the world.

How is that? How does that work? I can tell you the answer to that question, it doesn’t. You just cannot build the best products in the world by buying the cheapest products in the world.

Let’s think about this:

Do you really want to have a pacemaker that is built with the cheapest components that money can buy?

Do you really want that nuclear reactor to be made up of the cheapest products that money can buy?

Or how about that missile, or that automobile, or that airliner, or that surgical laser?

I am sorry, but if you buy the cheapest components and parts, you are not going to build the best products. It’s only common sense.